Rocky Point Artisan Brewers

A Short History of RPAB

Rocky Point Artisan Brewers is located in Rocky
Point, NY only blocks from the beach. We incorporated in 2008
shortly after we secured their brewing location. We spent a few
months renovating the brewing space -- a detached garage and purchased our
brewing system, a 50 gallon Blichmann system. We've spent the next
few years slowly acquiring equipment (fermenters, kegs, pumps, etc.) and
developing our brewing process and recipes. In the summer of 2010 we applied for our Federal Brewer's Notice.

Mike addresses the envelope which carried the RPAB paperwork to
Washington D.C.

Getting the Brewer's Notice took a little longer than a year and we are still not sure why it took so long. In January of 2012 we applied for a New York State Brewer's License which we received six months later (more or less on schedule). Now that we have all the legal requirements in place, we our selling kegs of RPAB beers as close to home as
possible.

Rocky Point Artisan Brewers started as a homebrewing partnership between
Mike Voigt and Donavan Hall in 2006. Mike Voigt began homebrewing in
1994. Donavan Hall began homebrewing in 1997.

The inspiration (if you can call it that) for starting a nanobrewery
came from two directions. Mike Voigt felt that the beer he was
brewing was better than most commercial beers, so he didn't feel like a
homebrewer anymore. Since he was brewing better beer than was
commercially available, then he thought it would be a good idea to take the
necessary steps to give the public access to the best possible beer.
Being an avid homebrewer and beer writer, I (Donavan) believed that E.F. Schumacher was right
when he said, "Small is Beautiful." So when Mike Voigt approached
me about the possibility of starting a nanobrewery, I said,
"Heck, yeah!" In 2009, Yuri
Janssen, a relatively new homebrewer and fellow Rocky Point
resident, joined our operation.

Most breweries pick names like X Brewing Company. While that's
fine, we thought that it wasn't so much the brewery that was
important, but it was the brewers. We always thought of ourselves
as Artisan Brewers since the word "homebrewer" and "homebrew" had acquired
a slightly negative connotation over the years. The word "craft" is
overused and is close to being a tired modifier of the monosyllabic word
that stands for our favorite beverage. So "artisan" seemed like a
good term to substitute for craft. Of course the grammarians might
complain and say it should be Rocky Point Artisanal Brewers, since
artisanal is the appropriate adjective form, but we think artisan works
not as a modifier of the word brewers, but as a co-noun.

The money. Well, we aren't rich, so we decided
to grow slowly. Here's how we did it. I asked how much
each of us typically spent on the purchase of commercial beer each
month. Two, maybe three hundred dollars a month, said Mike.
Yeah, me too, I said. So I made the radical suggestion, what if
we only drink our own beer and put the savings into the RPAB bank
account. Then we can buy brewing equipment with the money we
save. Cool!

Early on, we were looking for ways to involve the community
in our brewery. we were members of local CSAs
(Community Supported Agriculture). I asked, Why don't we try to
run our brewery like a CSA? We'll call it a CSB! Well, the
state of New York doesn't recognize CSBs, but we want RPAB to
be the community beer. We insist that our beer must be
affordable. One way to keep prices down is by offering beer shares to
people in the community. The details of how this will work and how
the state of New York will view it are unknown. We're still working on this plan. In the meantime we will make our beer available through the usual channels: fine craft beer bars and beer stores.

We have long been involved in the homebrew clubs on Long
Island. Together with Rich Thatcher, we started the Long
Island Beer and Malt Enthusiasts (LIBME) which is now an AHA recognized
homebrew club with well over 500 members. LIBME is one of three
active homebrew clubs on Long Island, but it's now the largest and most
active.

When we stared RPAB, we began experimenting with different
strains of yeast. We discovered that a particular strain of lager
yeast consistently produced fantastic beers. So we built a walk-in
fermentation room and two (now four) large conical fermenters. We concentrated
on lager production and now have a standard repertoire of a half dozen
lager beers: two types of Pilsner, a Helles, a Vienna, a Munich, a
Doppelbock, and a Schwartzbier. Each summer we brew as much
Hefeweizen as possible (ideal for consumption at the beach, only two
blocks away from the brewery). We have brewed other ales, mainly
English-style bitters and ESBs for cask conditioning, since we have an
English ale yeast that is very reliable. During the cooler months
we brew a Bitter, a Pale Ale, and a Porter (all for cask
conditioning). We also love Belgian-style beers, but have yet to
develop any particular beer for eventual commercial production.
Currently, we are experimenting with five different strains of Belgian
yeast to determine which works best in our brewery.

What we brew is guided mostly by our taste preference, but mostly by
what actually works in the brewery.

The biggest hurdles that face RPAB at the moment are associated with
production. Given the limited quantity that the brewers can produce,
the number of regular "accounts" that can be supplied will have to be
small. For small breweries, initially, demand out-paces the ability
to supply. Brewers often scramble to meet the demand by expanding
production. This can lead to mixed results. Staying small will
probably be the biggest challenge.

Advice to other prospective nanobrewers: Don't go too fast. Look
for ways of starting cheaply. The powers that be expect
you to do without revenue for almost a full year, so make sure you can pay
the rent on your brewery all that time.

Established in 2005, Rocky Point Artisan Brewers have been proudly hand crafting small brews for our friends.

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mailing list to keep up with what we are doing and when our next open
brewery night is.

(from left to right) donavan, yuri, and mike, the rocky point artisan brewers